UNIQUE DILEMMA BEFORE GILEAD

The company may spend $1 billion on its breakthrough new treatment for Covid-19 this year, but how much revenue it expects to generate is another matter.

MINNEAPOLIS: Gilead Sciences Inc. may spend $1 billion on its breakthrough new treatment for covid-19 this year alone, chief executive officer Daniel O’Day said. How much revenue—if any—the company expects to generate is another matter.

Details from a US government study and a separate trial conducted by the company itself suggest remdesivir may become the first medication approved to treat the novel coronavirus, which has sickened 3.2 million people worldwide and killed 233,000. Gilead is still in the early stages of developing and getting approvals for the medication to treat the pathogen, which first emerged in China less than six months ago.

The company has pledged to donate 1.5 million vials of the drug, its entire current supply, while O’Day said it is working with other major pharmaceutical companies to boost production of the medication, which must be given intravenously.

The unprecedented pace and nature of the operation has left investors and the analysts who scrutinise corporate performance scrambling to understand what the business will ultimately look like.

“There has been no other time like this in the history of the planet,” O’Day said. “There is no rule book out there, other than that we need to be thoughtful about how we can make sure we provide access of our medicines to patients around the globe and do that in a sustainable way for the company, for shareholders, and we acknowledge that. So point’s well-taken.”